LOCAL HISTORY PROJECT

Here is a Fortier Company truck hauling cut lumber from Byles-Jamison Mill near Dinkey Creek to Fresno. It is parked in front of the Tollhouse Cafe with the store barely visible across the street behind the cottonwood tree. The woman is unidentified. The cafe is on the right just out of the picture. Note the road is paved, the work being completed in the 1940's.

circa: 1954

Here are lumber trucks parked in front of the Tollhouse Cafe. Obviously the cafe was popular with truck drivers. The cafe is on the right out of the picture. Across the street, the store is on the left and the old gas station is to its right.

circa: 1952

This picture shows the site of the M.H. Yancey Cash Store after it was torn down. The foundation of the store was saved and the lumber from the former store was used to build a rental house on the old foundation. The house is still standing today and is owned by Phil and Bud Armstrong, Georgia Yancey Armstrong's sons. The house is completely hidden by vegetation. The cafe is to the right out of the picture and in the foreground is where cafe customers parked.

circa: 1992

This picture is of the original Tollhouse Church. The site is the same as today's Mary Barton Chapel. The land for the church and adjacent cemetery was donated by the Yancey family to the community in the 1880's. The first church burned down in the fire of 1931, burning up rapidly as it was made of wood and shakes. The church was non-denominational and has remained mostly so until the present.

circa: 1900

This picture is of the wild fire of 1931 that burned up the first Tollhouse Church as well as several thousand acres of foothills and timber. The fire was started by a local rancher burning brush in August and it burned over Burrough Mountain into Blue Canyon in the south and into Jose Basin in the north. Tollhouse was spared as the fire burned around it on both sides. Most of Tollhouse Peak's surviving timber was destroyed. The church is visible in the smoke line in the center right.

circa: 1931

Here is the Mary Barton Chapel as it appears in 1992. The Tollhouse Cemetery is to the right out of the picture. The chapel sits almost exactly on the original church site.

circa: 1992

This is the Dean house in Tollhouse when it was new. Tom Dean, a longtime Tollhouse resident is not visible in the baby buggy. His sisters, Hazel and Daisy, are standing in front of the house with their mother, Edna Williams Dean. The car is John Kleinhans', the first car in Tollhouse. Note the outside staircase to the second story. To the left, out of the picture, is Old Tollhouse Road and the toll house building.

circa: 1910

This is the Dean house in Tollhouse in the 1920's. The people seated on the bridge on Old Tollhouse Road are unidentified. In the background is Tollhouse Peak.

circa: 1925

The people in this picture are unidentified but they are sitting in front of the Tollhouse blacksmith shop. This is the oldest surviving building in Tollhouse. Much of today's Tollhouse Garage is the original parts of this building. Note the man on the left is holding a cat

circa: 1890

This picture is the Tollhouse blacksmith shop. The people are unidentified. Note the parts of wagons lying around the building. The board rack at the top of the building held a sign which, obviously, is missing.

circa: 1880